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BUREAU OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLICS,

WASHINGTON, U. S. A.

PERU.

BULLETIN NO. 60.
[Revised to May 1, 1895.]

1892.

BUREAU OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLICS,
NO. 2 LAFAYETTE SQUARE, WASHINGTON, D. C., U. S. A.

Director.-CLINTON FURBISH.

While the utmost care is taken to insure accuracy in the publications of the Bureau of the American Republics, no pecuniary responsibility is assumed on account of errors or inaccuracies which may occur therein.

By official notification to the United States Department of State in April, 1892, the Dominican Republic became a party to the support of the Bureau of American Republics.

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Chapter I.

GEOGRAPHY GEOLOGICAL CONDITIONS

METEOROLOGICAL

PECULIARITIES-FLUVIAL SYSTEM-ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE KINGDOMS-PHENOMENA OF THE COAST DESERT.

The traveler from New York to the capital of Peru, will be interested in observing that in the entire voyage of about 3,200 miles he has little occasion to change his watch after the meridian observation of each day on shipboard. And when at last he reaches Lima he is barely 150 miles 10 minutes west of his starting point. When his steamer has rounded Sandy Hook, on the outward passage, her course will be due south to the east end of Cuba, 1,200 miles distant, and so close to the island that he can see the light keeper and his family on the sands watching the big ship go by. On the port hand, 50 miles away, a clear day reveals on the horizon the peaks of Haiti; then the steamer changes her course to south by west, and in a run of 600 miles crosses the Carib bean Sea to Colon. This is not an agreeable part of the trip. A following wind, the northeast trade, blows only at about the ship's rate, and the perspiring passenger feels himself in a calm of the tropics, while on the clear reach of 600 miles the sea has been piling up behind him with constantly increasing swell, so that when he has landed on the mole at Colon he is glad to have left the pitching thing, with its scorching atmosphere; the wind has shown itself in the white caps of the ocean, but has blown him no breath of comfort.

Now, in a railroad ride of 50 miles he has crossed the Isthmus of Panama and enters the South Pacific Ocean. From this point

Bull. 60-1

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